Where do the hill-sheep go when they die?

Few men know of it; a few more women do although the reason for this is not clear. Noone’s done A Study although scientists think it has something to do with women’s inteweition and a Medieval spelling error that cosmically “took” somehow. But forget everything you have ever heard about mountain-sheep death rites; every myth and every legend, forget em all! For I have it on very good authority* that what follows is what really happens:

A cloud descends on a mountain, obscuring from human eyes a sheep-ritual so ancient that it is very, very old. Indeed, so incontinently old is this sheep-ritual that the first human ever to witness it was called Ug, son of Oorg, The Not Quite The Full Sapiens Yet. Within this cloud, all the mountain’s sheep gather and stand in a circle. Everyone loves a good Paaaassing.

There is no altar – however cool that would be – for an altar would remind the flock too much of the Old Testament, when their ancestors didn’t come out of things very well at all, and not a day passed when some poor wee lamb wasn’t being dragged off to a suspiciously cinematic stone slab in a wilderness somewhere. This has had many effects on the hapless sheep psyche, chief among them being that Charlton Heston is universally loathed in the ungulate world; and that the word “scape-goat” has become a highly-charged insult, spat with all the vitriol of a deep sheep suffering that man will not recognise.

“Phthoo! Scape-sheep more like!” say middle-class sheep with their sea-view rocks and pen-sheeyon-plans while, down in the ‘Hood, baaasta’s are referring to each other as “scape-gs” in much the same way as the n word is used among gangstas in South Central LA.

So, no altar then. No. There is only a simple rock or tuffet upon which an extra-wild-wooled Willer of the Weather invokes, with an eerie bleat, the Great Sheep Gods, Ovinus and Ovinia, to come for a fallen friend. (On weekends and major holidays, you get the Subbing Goddess, Mary – ah oui, she of Little Lamb fame but not of the contrarian gardening movement)

The Gods come. A great wailing and gnashing of lower incisors against upper horny pad commences. The dead sheep, now in his past tense, is brought hence from thence (over a fence.)

The cloud then lifts, carrying the soul of the debaaarted to greener pastures, where the sun always shines and every blessed and bleating heart sings sweetest music. Egg sandwiches and whiskey are passed around among the living and perhaps a few tears are shed but, for the most part, sheep are stoic and practical and not apt to wearing their hearts on their fleeces. There are always a few artsy, emotional young sheep though – known as the Bopeepians, they’re in every flock – with Ideas and harps and tie-dyed wool, trying to introduce new ideas to the proceedings, but they are in the minority, looked upon with disdain by the greater flock and, everyone agrees noddily, they are just showing off and embarrassing themselves). Sometimes the Gods stick around for this bit, ostensibly for the look of the thing but actually for the feast: the Gods are awfully fond of the hard stuff (eggs).

By the time the cloud has sailed on to the next mountain-top to collect the next given-up ghost, or stopped at the abattoir for a coach-party of souls to hop on board, all that any observer would see is a curious circle of sheep, chewing stolidly, unceasingly, starily, on wind-whipped grasses. With inexplicable bits of egg on their wool. Inexplicable, because hens don’t live on mountains. The observer – the same one – is left to wonder, for the rest of his life, about that egg, and that circle, and about that strange, faraway look** in those sheeps’ eyes…

* Mine

** Nothing mystical about this really, unless you count whiskey as mystical.

Short, ill story number two.

The scene: a quiet bar in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis. Outside, a storm is raging and noone has ventured beyond their warm, twinkling windows, noone that is, who isn’t a scone-faced plonker. A few old duffers are sitting nursing whiskey and grievances in their oilskins and the kind of jumpers that tell you someone at home loves them, even if they are difficult arseholes who’ve died inside years ago and have inconvenient food allergies. The kind of jumpers with creases down the sleeves.

Suddenly the door bursts open and, sillhouetted against the lightning and the roaring gale outside, stands the figure of a man. Quite a fit man, the barmaid, Molly, notes with approval – a quick mental calculation of all things considered helping her decide that yes, yes she rather thinks she would, if he asked.

Crisp packets and seagulls are blowing into the bar from the black wet street outside, breaking her reverie, and Molly screams at the man to shut the door for Gawd’s sakes. (She says this, despite being from Ness and therefore not a Cockney). The man obliges.

Turning again, he staggers a little and everyone can see he’s drunk. Old Tom goes back to dozing in the corner by the fire. Molly adjusts her ample bosom a little, finds an unexpected wine-gum in her cleavage which she pops in her mouth, and flounces up to the end of the short bar. “What you ‘aving, mister?” Again with the cockney accent – Old Murdo shrugs at Ancient Alec and they settle back to watch the only piece of action in the pub all night.

“My love has left me for another!” cries the man. “Right now I need a love song and a vodka-based poison to further emphasize for me the bitterness of love!”

“Won’t that make it worse?” asks Molly, all soft, round concern. “How about a nice Manhatten instead? That’ll soon put the roses back in your cheeks, ducks. You’ll feel better in no time, luvvie. Or a sex-on-the-beach?” She’d being practicing new drinks to try an lure in a younger clientele and replace the current ones, many of whom, she thinks ungenerously, are well overdue to die. She has big plans for a black and cerise colour-scheme once the last of them has croaked, with velvet banquettes and a glitter ball.

“Are you mad? Have you sheen de beach? Shex on the beach at the moment would be more like death on the rocks,” the man cries. “No! Look, I just want to lishten to some Chris De Burgh and drink a last whishkey before I shoot my face off widdis gun.” From out of his pocket he pulls a gun. Everyone gasps. He puts it back.

“Where’sh your duke-box?” he shlurs.

It’s over there by the Gents,” says Molly, shaken but not stirred. She’s a Hebrideanonian barmaid after all, and sees this type of thing a couple of times a year.

The man lurches over to what looks like a badly wired fridge in drag. He peers through the old, yellowed plastic to browse: “Bye-Bye Miss American Pie,” “Donald Where’s Your Troosers?” “Rage Against The Machine,” and ah, here it is:

Lady in Red by Chris De Burgh.

Stuffing some coins into the slot he turns, tears pouring down his face like water in a broken urinal. “Who can know the mysteries of the heart?“ he wails, waking up Old Tom, who doesn’t know. “Why must woman be so cruel and fickle? She’s tormented my soul ’til I can take no more. This night will be my last on earth!”

“is dancing with me, cheek to cheek,” warbles the juke-box. And something pings in Old Murdo’s heart.

“Here Murdo, man, you’re crying! What is it, old pal?” cries Ancient Alex. And then he feels it too.

“This beauty by my siiiiide. I’ll never forget the way you look toniiiiiiight.”

The tears come slowly at first, and then faster and thicker, and pretty soon every man in the small bar is bawling. Really sobbing their hearts out like, using their ancient tweed caps and abominable hankies to mop up the great salty teardrops streaming down their ruddy life-beaten faces. Molly is on a stool behind the bar, filing her nails.

*

Morning: white light streams through the net curtains and a curious ray sidles up Old Tom’s face to see if anyone can really be that wrinkly. Old Tom opens his eyes, noticing right away the fire has gone out. Shivering, he rises and gets ready to head for home. He wonders, briefly, if he should wake his friends but they look so peaceful, all passed out like that, on and under the tables, and Decrepit Angus there on the bar is snoring gently, so he thinks not. Besides, Molly will be back at 10, after she does her morning messages.

The low sun hurts his pale, watery eyes as he exits the door to the street. Branches are down all over and somebody’s washing-line is wrapped around the statue of Lord Leverhulme, bloomers covering one eye rakishly.

“Aye, it was an great night, right enough,” he thinks to himself as he walks through the town on his way home to Bellina, the paper and a fry-up.

My whole family and I have caught a common pestilence. Our throats are sore and our heads are leaking; I have lost my voice and one daughter wakes up every few hours screaming and terrified because her eyes are glued shut with dried eye-snot. So there will only be short ill posts this week. If I told you I sneezed as I typed this you wouldn’t believe me would you? You’d think the sneeze was for Dramatic effect or to give the post some Narrative Moment. But I did. I did.

I did.

Okay then. Today’s short, ill post:

It’s a One Act play continuing the sheep theme of the previous post.

The Silence Of The Lambs.

Scene 1

The Lambs: ” _________________________ .”

Scene 2

The Lambs: (aside) “__________________________ ?”

Scene 3

The Lambs: “__________________________ !”

Scene 4

The Lambs: (From offstage) “__________________________.”

THE END.

Overwriting is death in drama.

*

Kind well-wishers may send fruit-baskets, electrolyte drinks and general-interest magazines to Weardybeardysville California. Any moneys you care to send will be greedily snottily gratefully received too.

Unkind ill-wishers may point out in the comments what a big softie I’ve become since I left Scotland, birthplace of the common cold and the land whose motto should be Wheree’er ye be, let your nose run free, or at least Nemo me achoo-ne accessit. I’d like to remind The Unkind though that the angels see your heart.

The following contains scenes of a maudlin nature, and adult language. Reader discretion is advised.

Who can tell what loneliness the sheep knows as it wonders from bit of moor to other bit of moor! High on hills in lonely lands, where the gales of the North Atlantic batter and lash rain on the first land mass they have encountered in a thousand miles, that is the realm of the most ancient of British sheep breeds, the Lewis blackface.

While other breeds have been genetically manipulated over the years to make them bigger and their ears more ridiculous, the blackface has remained unchanged for centuries. Small and dreadlocked, the hardiness of the breed is well-known and well are they suited to life out in the Scottish elements.

But this is not the tale of those sheep. This is a tale of just one sheep, a lone, feral sheep – the enigma known as The Sheep With No Name – who, as a tiny lamb had escaped the flock through a hole in the fence. The crofter, assuming no unweaned lamb could survive on its own in April – the cruellest month after all – gave it up for dead. But, against staggering odds this lamb had survived!!

Sheer chance led it to a dry cave high on the mountain. The lamb had shelter. By striking its little hoof on a granite boulder it caused sparks to ignite the little piles of twig and grasses it had previously made by means of nose-nudging and the snuffle’n'tamp method. Now, having been the first farm-animal ever to have discovered fire, the lamb had warmth. How it knew how to do this it did not know, but something old and hoary in its mind was telling him what to do. Some call it instinct; some, the will to live; still others call it schizophrenia. But the fact is that, where countless lost lambs have foundered, this sheep had found a cozy cave with a fire at the mouth. It drank loch water but, without its mother’s milk, grew very pale* and thin. It was almost dead when the time of its natural weaning arrived and it dawned on it finally that he was walking and pooing all over plentiful breakfast, lunches and teas. The lamb had food. It grew strong.

Whether it was a man sheep or a lady sheep noone could say for sure, even it, until one day it was looking in a lochan and saw, reflected back in the hypnotising ripples, the handsomest sheep he had ever seen, with two of the most magnificent curled-shell-horns the world had ever grown. So, he thought, I am a ram. A ram I am. A ram! I am a ram! And so it came to pass that the sheep with no name had his first taste of over-rated children’s verse.

Now, you may think the life of a feral sheep would be a wild, trotting and unreflective one but you’d be wrong, for The Sheep With No Name was an intellectual: Firstly, he already lived in a cave with a fire at the mouth and it doesn’t take the brains of no Mister Plato to wonder about the shadows that wee mice and ants would sometimes make on the wall as they scurried in front of the fire, and then theorise that perhaps we may only know reality by the shadowy imperfect impressions the world imprints on us, and that perception is everything. This sheep had already done that by Week 2 of his freedom, proving that the life of the mind is the natural realm of the sheep.

Also, quite by accident, The Sheep With No Name was to amass great learning and a thorough appreciation of the work of Melvyn Bragg. One day, when his horns had just begun to grow, he was scratching an itch on an old ball of tumble-wire (old barbed-wire fencing) and all of a sudden the words “DOGGER, FISHER, GERMAN BYTE…” arrived in his ears. He soon realised that whenever his horns touched two particular barbs on the wire he received BBC Radio 4, The Shipping Forecast in this case. Who was this dogger? This fisher? Who was this biting German? He was astonished, to say the least but, because astonishment registers in the same way as delight, puzzlement, insanity and death on the face of a sheep, none but the most educated sheep-whisperers could have guessed of his astonishment. You’ll have to take my word on it.
He nosed the tumble-wire up to his cave and, before long, under the tutelage of the BBC, he had gained a broad understanding of world politics and literature and never missed The Archers, which, in his humble opinion, had grown a bit racy lately, stirring strange feelings in him that he didn’t understand. As a Radio 4 listener, of course, his first impulse was to write a stiffly-worded letter of disapproval to Broadcasting House in London, but of course, he couldn’t. And this was the trigger.

There followed a long painful night of existential crisis and some hysterical baaaing at the elements to “Take me, then! Take me! – What use am I? None, to man nor beast. Let me lie down and die, Cruel World! What are you waiting for, you bastard! I’m ready for you. Come and get me!

He had forgotten that perception is everything.

Raging at the storm with wild eyes and flared nostrils, he grew suddenly exhausted and, sinking to his knees, he was forced to acknowledge and finally accept that, alas, he had no fingers to write with – or a stamp or an envelope or a pencil for that matter – but it was the fingers bit that bothered him. All his heroes had fingers. Melvyn Bragg had fingers, he was sure of it. Fingers meant human and human meant smart, smarter than a sheep had any right to aspire to be. And far below, in their own little worlds, people carried on with their daily lives never guessing of the tortured soul on the mountain.

Then, as suddenly as the fury had possessed him, it left, and The Sheep With No Name fell into a deep depression. Many days he would go to the cliffs and stare for a long time at the sea, thinking how easy it would be to just fall in and be swallowed by the ocean. He liked to imagine he’d go with a gurgle.

But then Spring arrived, and the natural seretonin-boosting effects of dandelions in the diet cheered the Sheep With No Name up no end. Also, thanks to a timely piece of psychology programming from Manchester, he learned to love the fact that he was a sheep, and not to long for things that could never be: things like Sherry with Mr. Bragg or, even better, cocktails with Anne MacKenzie. This breakthrough was hard won though, and many months of periodic self-doubt and loathing preceded it, until, one morning, when he was looking sullenly at his reflection in a tiny loch. All of a sudden, staring at the honest, open sheep gazing back at him, he thought, I’m OK with me! I am a very special sheep with my own unique talents and desires and it’s OK to feel disappointment sometimes; its OK for boys to cry; I need to own the process of my own healing and grow as an ovine! There was noone around to tell him he sounded like a dork, although secretly he did suspect it.

Time passed and The Sheep With No Name grew older, happy in his own company mostly, but, sometimes, if you knew his habits, and were to look very, very closely, you might see a single tear of loneliness trickle down his hairy face. Other times you didn’t have to look closely at all – he was obviously bawling and carrying on. He was only ovine human after all. You see, he may have had the body of a wooly, feeble sheep, but he had the heart and at least one stomach of a king! And a king of Scotland too! For, in this most special sheep’s blood ran the milk of human kindness, the pomegranate juice of compassion and the acid of occasional indigestion. His body was all sheep but his soul was all too human.

One day, not long after this sheepiphany, all his knowledge and skills would be put to the ultimate test. But that is a story for another time.

Until then, little lambs, thousands of feet below, would look to the mountain-top at dusk hoping to catch a glimpse of the feral sheep, rampant, as he reared and snorted and tossed his noble head against the dying of the day. They would ask their mothers, Who is that mysterious rearing sheep?

And their mothers would tell them he is the essence of all sheep, the spirit of the flock, the thing that allows us to be flung in fanks, and sheared roughly, and eventually slaughtered, without us forgetting our inherent dignity. This is our lot in life and we must accept it and be strong until the great Wheel Of Fortune turns and things get better. But he reminds us of what it means to be sheepish without ever truly being sheepish. Who knows if he is even real or not. He may exist only in our hearts. He may be only a shadow on the wall of the cave of life, a projection in our minds of what sheepkind should be. But we believe in him, don’t we Moira?

And Moira would nod.

Well, the lambs couldn’t make any sense of that, obviously, but still, they wondered about The Sheep With No Name and some dreamed of him leading them free from the shackles of domesticity once and for all. Most dreamed only of chocolate-covered grass or getting laid, or getting laid in chocolate covered grass.

To be continued…

* If you don’t know what a pale blackface sheep looks like, then, frankly, I have no time for you.

Scientists say that soft-tissue has linked Tyranosaurus Rex to the modern chicken!!

The story goes like this: One day in the February of 2007, in a lab far, far away – the Outer Hebrides kind of far away – a scientist was mopping up after some chicken blood experiments when she found she was out of paper-towels. Being a resourceful young scientist and, more pertinently, a hay-fever sufferer, she took a soft tissue (the lab won’t say if it was Kleenex or Co-op’s own) from her bag and mopped up the remainder of the blood.

Just then, another scientist, a handsome male one, burst through the doors and said “Oh ____,” (name witheld until a related divorce case is settled) “I must have you now! Don’t you know you drive me crazy?”

“Oh!” she said.

The pair then had some wild thrashing sex on the workbench, pausing only to shift the bunsen burners and for the lady scientist to fling the bloodied soft-tissue away with abandon. The coitus completed, the pair went home to their respective spouses for the weekend with work and chicken-diseases far from their thoughts.

But all weekend long, the forgotten soft tissue lay on the window-sill where it had fallen. And deep within the moist, sun-warmed crevices of the tissue, something was stirring. Something was stretching. Something was trying out its tiny, tiny limbs.

The following Monday, the scientist returned to her lab and was perturbed to see the tissue lying in the window – usually she was far more tidy around her work-space. Flushing a little at the memory of the tissue-flinging circumstances, she walked over to the windowsill to dispose of it. But something made her hesitate. It was her Scientific Curiosity: the very same Scientific Curiosity that had made Alexander Fleming hesitate all these years before at his windowsill, and the same Scientific Curiosity that had formed the bulk of the defence argument in the Murdo Macauley sheep-rape rap.

She peered at the tissue and what she saw took her breath right away and wouldn’t give it back until she concentrated really hard on breathing again. For, lying, nestled in the soft folds of that soft, soft tissue was a teeny-tiny baby dinosaur.

“Goooroar goo goo!!” it roared at her, adorably. A T Rex! She recognized it immediately, not because she was a scientist, but because she was a mother and had stepped on one only that morning. Weeping tears of incredulous joy at this miraculous new life, this happy accident that had led to such unimagined compressing of the Ages in a tissue, and the pictures of herself in Nature and Hello! magazine that her discovery was bound to precipitate, she ran with the news to The Authorities who ran to the Media who ran back to the lab and took loads of pictures.

The baby dinosaur was named Spike in a BBC phone-in competition and was sent to live with his own kind in a special observation chicken-coop in Uig. There he flourished, getting up to all sorts of mischief with his little chick cousins, who, being children, stopped and stared at his scales and tail but didn’t see that his being different was a good reason not to play with him. Time passed and everyone marvelled at how the little dinosaur grew and displayed appropriate social chicken behaviours with the others.

All was going well until one day, something snapped in Spike’s lizard hindbrain and he bit the heads off everyone in his new family in such a savage blood’n'beak’n'fluff bath that some witnesses to the carnage are said to have sworn off poultry for life.

Spike, now 20 feet tall with acne and a roar that was squeaky one minute and earth-movingly unearthly the next, tore through the observatory walls, thinking about how he needed some space and had to get out of here, man. He’d been restless for a while but the scientists and other chickens though it was just “his age.” But it was more than that.

You see, a week prior to this, one of the scientists came to work with some fish he’d poached caught in Loch Erisort. Spike had caught a whiff of something, a deep, ancient base-note smell almost overpowered by the high, acrid fish stench, but there, definitely there. Something SAME was out there, Spike sensed. Something ancient and scaly like him was in that loch!

“Spikey go Loch Erisort”, said his tiny brain and his yellow eyes blinked. “Wait! But they so kind to Spikey here” his pea-sized intellect reminded him, “And Spikey have his eye on dat Miranda chick. No no, Spikey stay and see if he get laid but not like egg.”

Alas for them all, on the Thursday, Miranda snubbed him. Feelings of confusion and rejection overwhelmed his primitive bird-brain and on the Friday he broke out of the coop, leaving nothing but regret and feathers in his wake.

He was shot dead before he’d even reached Miavaig.

The End.

Can you spot the deliberate error? Ah go on, you can so! I don’t mind telling you that I’m hopping around in glee waiting to tell you. It’s all made up! Yes, it’s incredible but the above is all untrue! Except for the afternoon delight amongst the test-tubes and round-bottomed flasks. That bit was real.

No what really happened was that scientists generated a chicken from the soft-tissue of a dinosaur-bone. Dinosaurs bones are full of snot, you see, hence the need for a tissue. It’s not really snot, of course; it’s just a bit of leftover primeval soup lurking in the bones. Nowadays thrifty cooks make soup from bones but, in the way-way-back times, the bones came from the soup. And there was no cheating with Stock cubes either. God’s a very able cook and had the amino acid base pre-made and packed in his freezer, all ready to go.

The last post was about the terrible things that can happen if you don’t tell enough lies. I’d averred in the post that death is the mother of beauty. Read the post if you care why I averred this. Anyway, Fat Sparrow responded:

“I though death was the mother of religion.”

This might seem to be so but, as my granny might say, seaming isn’t the same as sewing. (She doesn’t really say that – I made it up, just now, in a baldly lying way. It does sound like a sewing, granny, sofa-doiley typa thing to say, though, right?…Umrgle, look just forget it, eh.)

See, Death is really the granny of Religion. Religion just called her “Mammy” so that her real mother, Hypocrisy, wouldn’t have to go to a home for unwed teenage mothers. Religion’s mother is actually Death’s other daughter, Hypocrisy. It was a schoolgirl mistake by poor Hypocrisy – not uncommon in rural areas where there’s no cinema or yoof-club to occupy young minds and – more crucially – young bodies.

Anyway, Beauty, Hypocrisy and Religion (really Hypocrisy’s daughter – are you following this?) were all brought up as sisters by Death. It was a turbulent household. Hypocrisy and Religion were always ganging up on Beauty. They would shave her achingly beautiful eyebrows off while she was Beauty-sleeping. They would poke her in the head with forks even though it was breakfast time and they were having Rice-Krispies – a non-fork food! And, of course, Death is a very busy woman. With all she has to do in the world with wars, famines, auto-erotic asphyxiations in the Home Counties etc. it’s amazing she had time to give them any kind of complete and balanced breakfast. She certainly didn’t have time to witness Beauty’s persecution, at the hands of her sisters: Death was busy elsewhere at the sacking of the beauty that was Rome in the 5th century; the criminally anti-aesthetic decision to let men wear powdered wigs in the 18th century; and she completely missed the whole Oscar “Champion of Beauty” Wilde trial while on a foreign trip, never learning of it ’til he died and told her himself.

“Damn,” she thought, “I should really spend more time with the kids. Hypocrisy and Religion are really beating the shit out of Beauty these days. Together, they are an almost unstoppable force. I must have an encouraging word with Beauty; put her in touch with some artists. Send her to New York, maybe.”

Beauty has accomplished much though, despite Hypocrisy and Religion’s rotten tricks. She’s managed to save many beautiful things for the ages; like Rome – in WWII this time, when it was declared an open city and fighting there was forbidden; like the ancient cave-paintings at Lascaux; and like the sense of herself in mankind’s heart.

So. Anyway. What was I on about? Oh right, gorrit. So, although it’s not widely put about, Death is the mother of Beauty and Hypocrisy is the mother of Religion, not Death. Beauty goes on to marry the Beast, and Hypocrisy to live in a sham of a marriage with Religion’s real father, Power, who will be beastly to little boys and get into a lot of trouble that Hypocrisy will have to try and cover up.

You know the rest. I only know the family circumstances because I’m great pals with Indiscretion, who was in labour with her wee one, Oopsi, at the same time Hypocrisy was having Religion in the next room. Lovely girl, Indiscretion, but a mouth on her bigger than a baleen whale’s.

The Lewis of long ago was a wild place, a wooly place, a place without tea. It is true that in some small pockets and folds of the rumpled land, some latent need for mankind to civilise had led the villagers to make brews of dried seaweed and a very popular thistle-based infusion called Mess Cailleen – so-named for its inventor, Untidy Kathleen. By and large though, tea was not widely available and so we islanders had to devise other civilising rituals around which to organise our days.

One of these rituals was the Rite of the Lie. It took place every morning at around 11 o’clock. Improbable sandwiches were served and people stopped work for half an hour to sit in the buzzing heather, relax, and tell each other outrageous whoppers. Over on the mainland the saying went that your Lewisman was true of heart, noble in nose, and honest as the day was long (provided the day was only 23 and a half hours long).

Although the practice arose spontaneously, the civilising principle behind the Rite Of The Lie was that people should have a chance to get rid of the fantasical before fantastical pressure built up within us, and we started to believe in everything anyone told us. (Rural, isolated peoples everywhere are particularly vulnerable to this.) It would get us pondering the big questions for the remainder of the day, making our manual labours pass more quickly. Wandering ministers (known affectionately as the Roving Revs) would travel about the moors making sure people were getting the answers to these questions right of their own free will, naturally – questions about the nature of truth, the existence of God, the nature of man, and, of course, things of a more practical nature too, such as, does Kenny Tweedy’s observation that Guinness does not get rusty when you leave it out in the rain mean that in fact it is not full of strength-giving iron?

The island mind is as fertile as dungy loam and so great were some of the whoppers told, and with such boldness and conviction, that some mornings the sun would snuff itself out for a minute or two, convinced momentarily by someone swearing, with compelling arguments to back the point, that day was, in fact, night. Each person was allowed to insert 2 lies per rite; all the rest of the conversation had to be true. There were no other rules. Great lies and small slanders were given the same weight. “False lies” were commonly employed as red herrings to wrong-foot and create distrust in the listener. For example, if someone were to say that Ceardy Calum (Unattractive Malcolm) got lucky with Marina Cleeps Mor (Busty Marina) 3 times behind his peatstack before the cock crowed on Sunday morning, and also said that Uig was tipped to win the Cup), well – these two things were so improbable that, if the person went on to say that people South of Perth had webbed feet and built great cathedrals to celebrate moustaches, you would have little choice but to believe him. They are odd down South.

Peigi Morag Mackenzie of Brue was a champion at the lie-rite, an acknowledged high priestess of the art who regularly won the annual Lie Of The Land. Her best-remembered unsolved lie, although not by any means her best in terms of artistry, split the island irascibly in two and debate rages to this day as to its truth.

That day she said three things. Bracketed between the assertions that custard boils at the same temperature that sadness melts; and that clouds are the cigar-puffs of God’s nostrils and the reason we have so many clouds in Lewis compared to say, Tahiti, is because God likes to hang out and smoke with us more than anyone else in the whole world; Peigi Morag said this: Death is the mother of beauty.

What she meant, and subsequently argued for, was that divinity was to be found here, on Earth, because only here, where death threatened everything, could beauty be truly appreciated. In heaven, on the other hand, where there is no death and beauty is eternal, we just could not appreciate beauty as much – we would take it for granted. Poignancy, an important part of beauty, would be missing in heaven. We ought to look at Earth, she said, as the only paradise we will know and, as part of our duty to God, try to ensure it is indeed a paradise for all peoples.

She developed this idea, she claimed, while out roaming with her beloved sheep, looking at them in all their moods and tufty splendours; looking at the world too, and all its moods and tufty splendours. We didn’t pay proper attention to any of the nature around us, she said. The sheep were talking, we just weren’t listening (unfortunately, she got a bit earnest and weepy at this point.)

For a while, before the synod elders were called in, a good many people were persuaded by her argument. But holy men were alarmed! Outraged! Went purple! Peigi-Morag was arrested and brought to trial for heresy.

At the trial, the mainland press learned many unexpected things about Hebrideanonians. They learned we have a complicated relationship with custard, the complexity increasing as you progress from the Inner to Outer Hebrides. (And when you leave Skye for the outer isles, make no mistake, you are making progress.) They learned that happiness and sadness do indeed mingle yellowley in island bowls in proportions reflective of how much pudding is left at any given instant multiplied by Planck’s Constant. At Peigi-Morag’s trial though, her assertion that custard boils at the same temperature that sadness melts was judged as an ambiguous statement because noone had a thermometer for custard (Aonghais Gle-Mhor – Very Big Angus, is on record as saying that he had a thermometer for happiness under his sporran, adding, heh, heh, heh. But the judge deemed it inadmissable evidence. Later, his 15 children would become known as The Evidence, and his wife – behind her back – as Mrs. Admissable.)

It was clear, of course, that God prefers Lewis people to any one else in the world (why else would he have put the Garden of Eden in Garyvard?) so the jury found the God’s Nostril/clouds maxim to be the Truth. As an Ambiguous – like the custard ruling – was counted as a Truth, that meant that the Beauty in Death one must, must, according to the 2-lie rule, be a lie. A lie! A lie! Poor Peigi-Morag insisted that that one was the truth, adding – in a sentence that did her cause little good – that God did like the Tahitians better than Lewisfolk. But the elders shook their magisterial wattles menacingly at the jury, terrifying them into obeisance. The forces had gathered against her. She was sunk.

Peigi-Morag MacKenzie pleaded no no no in the manner of Amy Winehouse but that only turned the jury, who were more of a Wayne Newton crowd, further against her. Ostensibly, she was not sentenced for the substance of her “lie” although everyone knew the case wouldn’t even have come to trial but for it; the question she posed was just too big for the church powers to countenance. They didn’t want the people thinking that. Instead, her conviction was for the crime of Not Telling Her Full Allotment of Lies – only one in a 30 minute period – and she was sentenced to death by boredom and booked on a passage to Middlesborough that night.

But Peigi-Morag would not accept Middlesborough as her fate. That afternoon, before the ferry came to take her away, she was allowed a compassionate visit to her sheep for the last time. Breaking from her guards suddenly, she ran to the edge of the cliff where she had warned her beloved flock never to wander. Without a look back she leapt over the stile and flung herself far out over the bay, screaming tunefully “They tried to send me to Middlesborough, but I said no no no!”

Her remains were scraped off the rocks at the foot of the cliff and buried in unconsecrated ground with no headstone. Rumour has it that the Rangers Supporters Club unwittingly built their meeting-house/bar on her remains but, as her ghost is only ever seen when the Rangers Supporters are well wellied, (any hour after 6pm) most people believe that these are more your Johnnie Walker type hauntings, and little attention is paid. It is true though that Rangers has never won a match against Middlesborough at home or away. Make of that what you will.

But that is all in the past. She is dead, locked up in the moody, greeny-blue, bipolar tomb we call Earth. It is only left for us to decide if Peigi-Morag was right or wrong about Death being the mother of beauty.

PS. Amid all the egg-hunting and egg-rolling and egg-painting and worrying about what they did to the chickens to up their production so dramatically; and amid all the chocolate-scoffing and then smeary-faced chocolate-rueing this weekend, we saw Notes On A Scandal. Flippin’ fab, it was. Highly recommended. Look, if you want a decent movie review, you’re at the wrong blog, mister. “Flippin’ fab” says all it needs to. Leave me alone!

A long time ago, away back in the old and yorey days of Lewis, before the days of Christianity, before even the shortlived days of Sheep Worship,* – yes, back in even yorier days than these – were the wild, waily pagan, pigtails-in-beards days.

At that time it was believed that the stars hid many portents for the Lewis people, (Us) who were a far more blessed people than their sworn enemies, the Damn Uisteachs ** (Them); just ask Us. Folk were in thrall to the heavens and believed that all of life and wisdom was written in them. Whosoever could plot a course of All The Right Decisions for the island, like some great celestial pinball wizard, was held in highest reverence and also aloft on a golden bier with just the one silver shoveller behind (see first footnote).

There we are then; there’s your background.

And so it happened one day that the most venerable star-reader of them all met the time of his killing in a way he’d wholly failed to predict in his morning auguries. Domnhaill Fios (Clever Donnie) was hit in the ceann with a flog-ball during a play-off for the ancient West-highland Flog Cup, dying instantly.

On the very same day, shortly after the funeral, the shocked Leodhaisachs (Us, remember) received a message by seagull saying that the Uisteachs (Them) had landed in Tarbert and were marching up to seize Lewis for their own. Seagulls can’t always be trusted to get their messages right but Calum, The Seagull-Whisperer, said that he’d trust Seonaig with his ex-wife’s life.

The Leodhaiseach elders gathered together at the ancient standing stones at Callanish, and summoned all of Us to hear their plan against the Them from the South. Ale and bread were brought and for 5 hours they debated what the stars were telling them to do. This was difficult at high noon but, bless them, they did their best from memory of the night-sky before. But, alas! It had been The Great Feast Of Let It All Hang Out the night before so memories were shaky and the reconstructed star-charts all looked a bit scrambled. In one chart, if you joined the dots they spelled the words shit-faced, which just goes to show how accurate the stars were back then.

But try these elders did. Iain Lag-Chridheach (Faint-Hearted John) said he thought Venus rising in Gemini meant that we should greet them as brothers and appease their war-like ways. Seamas, Am Bard (James, The Poet) said nonsense! All Venus in Gemini meant was that the Widow MacAuley (a Pisces) shouldn’t attempt to wash the curtains in her hovel for a fortnight. Nonono, he said, the planets were clearly telling them to face the enemy head-on with their new state of the art pointy-stick technology from Skye. Was there a volunteer to run back to Stornoway to get the pointy sticks? There was? Smashing, Wee Hector!! Away with you then – fast as ever you can!

Debate continued. Soon voices were raised and unkind things said about certain people’s beards and certain other people’s wives’ beards, and so it was that nobody but Seonaig the seagull saw the old, bent Cailleach NicDhomnailleach, huffing her way up the hill from the Callanish Stones gift-shop/hovel she ran with her revolting cat, Luch.

“Silence!” she roared in a terrible voice that belied her little old lady frame. “This is what we must do: we must take a nap!”

There was a short puzzled silence punctuated only by some head-scratching, and a little anxious flea-grooming amongst the women.

“Take a nap?” said Riceoird Fior (Clever Dick), at last. “But, with all due respect, Cailleach NicDoomna, NicDomin… with all due respect, Wizened Old Crone, the Them are only an hour away and seek to chop us up ’til we are nothing but sausage-meat for the seagulls.” Seonaig, sitting on an ancient standing stone nearby, looked hurt at the insinuation. O when would these out-dated stereotypes die! she thought melodramatically (your North Atlantic seagull is a very melodramatic bird). “How,” continued Riceoird, “can we be taking a nap at a time like this? It’s madness that you’re speaking!”

“Mark my words!” screeched the woman, fixing him with one intensely green eye while the other milk-cast one swivelled madly around in its socket. “For you will surely die this day if you do not take an immediate nap!”

“Squawk!!” yelled Seonaig suddenly, and sure enough, from a Squawk-Westerly direction the Leodhaisachs heard the rumble of thousands of Uisteach feet on the other side of the crest. All turned their heads squawkwards and, for a moment, the only sound among them was the sound of squirting adrenaline.

“Have your swords ready, men, women and children!” screamed the old woman. “Then lie down and take a nap. Put that teddy away, Murdigan Coille (Wee Murdo Plank), it’s not a real nap, you foolish boy! Now, wait for my signal everyone.”

Well, nobody else was saying anything in an impressive, unearthly way and nobody else was standing on a hummock where the wind streamed their hair back epicly, and so, one by one, they did as they were told. And so it was, in the year 332, that the Leodhaiseachs laid down and waited to die in the place called Calanais.

What the Uisteachs (Them) found, as they crested the hill and looked at the plain below, appeared at first to be a wholesale slaughter. The great mass of Lewis society lay, as if already dead, at their feet, around their own sacred standing stones. It was amazing! They’d heard about Coowil Ayde cults before but hadn’t noticed the Lewisfolk were particularly depressed lately or anything. Stunned, they stood in disbelief at the sight. Then, from off to the left, came the sound of gentle snoring (Murdigan) and, as the warm sun shone on the scene, a few bumble-bees buzzed sleepily about their business.

But can it really be? They’re sleeping? … They’re sleeping! Ruaidhreadh Caora (Sheep-faced Rory), the Chief of The Them could hardly believe his luck. He was going to fire that bloody star-gazer tomorrow, the one that’d told him over his morning porridge that the charts all said to wait for tomorrow to strike or Doom would be their’s.

Hoho! This will be easy, I’ll be back in time for Bailivanich vs. Portree, he thought, as he raised his hand. So filled with hubris was he that he hardly noticed the birds had now confined their singing to a few nervous twitters and the taking of bets on which side would win; or that the bees had buggered right off to watch from the fence. Sheep-face Rory, High Chieftain of The Them, let his hand fall like the hammer of Fate itself, signalling his warriors to fall on the nappers.

The Uisteachs descended the hill, their horrible hairy faces gurning with wicked blood-lust. They were going to get to kill, maybe rape some of those fine Lewis sheep a little, and get back for the match!

“Now!” shrieked the Cailleach, and, like a single beast the dozing, The Us came alive with a great howl of rage. Swords flashed and skirts whirled around manly ankles. The Us were slightly down hill from The Them but we had the element of surprise. It was over almost as soon as it had begun.

That day the peat turned red with the blood of Uistmen and, when it was all over, grown men groaned and wept to see the carnage before tripping off to watch Bailivanich vs. Portree. A hundred or so Uisteachs were left alive and were allowed to escape South to tell their kin of Callanish, The Place Of 1000 Them Tears. Mention Callanish to a Uisteach today and he will still blanche and offer to buy the first round.

The Cailleach NicDhomnailleach was anointed head of the Lewisfolk and, as she had to move to the big town of Stornoway (popn. 103), she sold her gift-hovel to Peigi Plank, Murdigan’s mam, for two and a half cows.

Wee Hector made it to Stornoway before collapsing and dying, and it was this famous run that gave the name to the stornathon, a race of 15ish miles still run all over the world today.

And all lived happily ever after ’til some silly Gall (Lowlander) decided the stars were telling him to go and build wind-farms in the Hebrides, but that’s another story.

The moral of the tale is Let sleeping Lewismen lie but, if you can’t, ensure that Venus isn’t anywhere near Gemini at the time.

* This was a loony religion. There’s something just so unworshipable about a sheep. C’mon, don’t try to be all PC and culturally sensitive – just say it: What a crappy religion! There are no holidays with it either so nobody put up much of a fight when the Christians came and taught us to slit our former Gods’ throats and eat them instead of carrying them around on golden biers. It’s true, we carried the crown-ed sheep on golden biers with attendants behind scooping up their business on silver shovels to turn into medicine for the sick and mad. There are still a few practitioners of Sheepism in the more inbred glens of Harris. They’re not using a golden bier any more though because times are medium hard and they have to pay for the satellite telly now too. It’s Mrs. MacKenzie’s Coronation tea-tray they’re using these days.)

** Damn Uisteachs = Damn people from the Southern Isles, damn them.

Back in the Magnificent Days, on the Isle of Lewis, there lived a housewife called Lola who may or may not have been my great, great, great grandmother. (Great + great + great = magnificent, ergo the Magnificent Days. Look it up in Wikipedia; it’s right there.) At any rate, it was back in days of either yore or lore, one of the two; and if consonants should get mixed up occasionally through the mists of time? Well then, so be it. Yes, so be it.
(Smokes pipe thoughtfully, nodding.)

Lola MacLeod was a study in contrasts. One eye was brown, one blue. Her petticoats were of finest French silk yet she wore great man-boots and scanties made from Highland-cowhide from far-off Inverness. They itched and chafed something dreadful but that was as nought to a woman like her. She laughed at chafing – Hahahahaha! she thought. She mooned at itching, cackling wildly. Cackle! she thought.

She taught Sunday school but once tore out a man’s throat with her teeth for saying that silence is golden. She could win both the village best eggless-sponge and tractor-pulling competitions in the same day. She cried over sonnets and babies stillborn but, if there was a emergency outbreak of warts anywhere on the island, she could, without blink of either coloured eye, gore a passing rabbit with a spoon to harvest its wart-curing appendix juices. Lola was loved and feared in equal measure. She was also dumb as a post.

You see, Lola had never spoken a word since her husband, Wee Kenneth, had been lost at sea. Often the villagers would see her wandering out on the black sea-battered rocks to weep silently and alone, as the gulls skirled and screamed around her and occasionally did their business on her biannac.* The villagers would see her raise her arms in supplication as if to ask the world, the heaving, roaring sea, e’en God Himself: Why? Why? And sometimes she’d let the salt-tacked blast take the thin shawl from her thin shoulders to the same watery grave as Wee Kenneth’s – her own brave Coinneach Beag.** Then would mothers lead their children away saying, don’t look, darlings, you’re too young to know of breaking hearts. Come away now, come away!

All children loved her, and all animals, save for the rabbits. The children would follow her through the village and although she couldn’t speak to them if they misbehaved, she could still give them a good tongue-lashing with her much-feared Spaniard’s-tongue-on-a-walking-stick stick.

The story goes that a visiting Spanish Captain got a bit too Spanish with her one night at a ceilidh so she took a pair of pinking-shears and with a mute howl of fury (which she managed to convey silently with her terrible rolling eyes), she cut his tongue out. The Spaniard fell in love with her immediately, of course. He’d never met a woman with such fire before – but alas the poor wretch could no longer roll his rrrs in a sexy way and she was unimpressed with his gurgly cooing.

He sailed for home the next day with a starey, starry look in his eyes, sorrow in his heart and great gobs of blood and tongue-bits in his mouth. Lola was a fair woman though and in return for his tongue, she had given him some kippers and a lock of her hair (leg) according to The Law of The Book which mandated “an eye for an eye and some leg-hair for a tongue.”

And, do you know, to this day, in Southern Spain, the children still eat red frothing sherbert and smoked fish paella, and ritually shave a goat’s legs on the Feast Day of Great Lola of The North. Church bells ring and, for a moment, two great sea-faring nations are united again in lore. Or yore. One of the two.

So Lola’s fame spread far and wide and pretty soon kings and princes had heard of her wisdom, her half-savage bravery and her fierce loyalty to a dead husband. This really turned the kings and princes on and pretty soon they all wanted to marry her.

Mmm-hmm, oh yes. The Tales of Lola are great and many. Maybe one day I’ll tell a few.

((Sighs. Coughs. Puts out pipe. Filthy habit))

*biannac – sort of head-scarf or covering.

** Wee Kenneth

Here, a little housewife, I
Sit upon my stool and sigh;
It’s dark, midnight, I’m feeling blue;
The cat is looking maudlin too.

I think of what I want to say -
It comes, it goes, it will not stay;
The Muse has left the building, gone;
Abandoned me; “Support withdrawn.”

What’s this? A voice! “Cheer up!” it cries,
“Don’t fool around with wherefores, whys!”
“Trouble?* Did you speak?” I query
(She never speaks unless I’m beery)

Trouble looks at me, she blinks;
Inscrutable – she’s as the Sphinx.
“Don’t mess about” I say, still shaken.
I try to keep my knees from quakin’.

Then, I think, that voice seemed friendly!
It wishes well; sounds kind. Suddenly,
It comes again: “Sam do not fear me!
I’m Voice-O’er Man come from the telly.

“I can’t be seen, I’m disembodied;
My voice is booming, epic, storied;
But nights, to keep me off the rum,
I moonlight as a fairy Godmum

“You say you’re feeling blue tonight?
Let me help you ease your plight.
You’ve just two wishes – spend them well -
The Market’s hurting us as well;

To make ends meet, we’ve cut right back;
Tooth Fairy’s turning tricks and crack!
We’ve only got 2 spells per litre,
Now hurry up, you’re on the meter!”

I thought, I thunked, I hemmed, I hawed,
Full of wonder, overawed.
Moonbeams puddled round the apples,
Silver light in pools and dapples.

“I have it!” whispered I discreetly
“My mind’s made up! I’m sure, completely!
What I want is Solomon’s knowledge
And ken that they don’t teach in college.”

“I’m sorry” said the voice, “You see
We’ve had a rush on Sol, ‘cos he
Had wisdom we all want to know
In these uncertain times: stock’s low.

In Wisdom all that’s left to offer you
‘Sthe Dubious Doublethink Of W;
Not asked for much, we’ve got a heap
Of his thoughts, AND those of the Veep

“Oh dear!” I said, “I must refuse
For I already have the blues.
Wading throught that fog of cant
Could render me MORE ignorant.”

“One more wish” said subbing Godmum
“Quick! I’m not here ad finitum!”
“I want to write of time,” I sighed
“Of fury, love and lives denied!”

“But” I whined, “The Muse is gone!
Alone I labour on t’wards dawn.
I wish…I wish…
I wish the words came swiftly, sweetly
My thoughts arriving meetly, neatly”

“It can’t be done, I’m sorry, Sam.
Errata’s gone, she’s on the lam.
What with poets’ importunings;
Editors debating prunings…

She’s buggered off; o’er-worked, she’s fled.
She left a note: “Piss off!” it said.
“I’m on my hols, leave me alone!
Don’t call ‘cos I’ve turned off my phone.

“Say I’ll come back when I’m ready
‘Til then, bash on, stay firm, keep steady.
All requests temp’rilly denied
(Especially tell that damn Sam, Child Bride!)”

“Oh,” said I, my hopes all rent,
“I guess she’s right. It’s my intent
To drop this folly, poetry;
It’s back to limericks for me!”

*

There once was a planet called Pluto
Most unjustly given the boot-o
The scientists (swine!)
Kicked him out of the nine
Poor Pluto’s now rendered caputo.

* Trouble = My cat.

For greater enjoyment of this pome, try not to notice it?s crap, and doesn?t scan and strains to

rhyme. Thanks.

Being a fur’ner in a strange land, people sometimes ask me “How did you wind up here?” or “How did you meet your Problem Husband who is twice your age but we’re good-hearted people so will pretend that’s not odd?”

Here is how it happened:

My parents sold me at the age of 12 for a John Deere tractor, a pair of nylons and a bottle of Jack Daniels. Weaving drunkenly off down the road, my parents turned and yelled “Take care, young’un, and be sure always to be kind! Yeeehaaa, this rig rocks, Seonaig! Next stop, Ullapool!” They honked their horn as they turned the bend in the road and that was the last I ever saw of them.

Weeping silently, I turned and looked into the cold, fish-like eyes of my new life, but not before looking into the cold, fish-like eyes of my new “owner”. Her name was Mrs. Billingsgate, like the market, and she ran a boarding house “for those wot weren’t welcome elsewhere”. For this was Near London and they talk like that Near London.

We left Near London straight away. Mrs. Billingsgate (how I would come to hate that name!) drove and I rode with her spotty son Roland on the back of a wooden cart and, through my woe, was almost oblivious to the anachronism of this as Toyota Avenses and Nissan Micros sped past us on the highway, spooking the cart-horse, Ted, who passed away from nervousness soon after that trip. I wept for Ted because he was my only friend in those early days in London.

At length we arrived at the boarding house which was in a dark, gloomy lane (it’s the gloomy lane on London’s famous “Take The Gloomy Lane Tour!” tour for which the bus-drivers demand extra compensation on account of the screamings and stabbings and wailings and, unexpectedly, the cluckings.) Ted, (God bless that horse!) parallel-parked our cart skillfully between two similar carts despite being lashed all the while by the boy, Roland (a more odious youth, I have yet to encounter).

I alit from the cart, clutching my thin woolen shawl around my shoulders as the settling London fog was making the air nippier than a bowlful of teething pirrhanas. As we had travelled straight from the island that morning, I was still wearing our traditional garb of a long, plain but becoming dress with crinolene petticoats, thin-woolen shawl and a biannac (a kind of headscarf that speaks Gaelic). I also had my Nike trainers on because when I heard we were ” just going to take a wee trip down South” I decided I wasn’t going to let these London kids think we don’t know about fashion in the Hebrides. Upon lifting my skirts to avoid a puddle, Roland spied my Nikes and his piggy little eyes shone greedily in his scone-like face. Later, he would steal them for money to support his absinthe habit.

I looked up at the grey, lowering building in which I was to be indentured as a scullery maid, patting Ted’s nose absently, and an iciness took its unforgiving grip on my soul and squeezed.

“‘Ere, watch aht, young miss, that’s moy naahose you’re squeezing”, said Ted, sounding not unlike Dick Van Dyke’s cheerful sweep, Bert.

I doubted my ears, but they were still there, and then my sanity, but I didn’t know where that was and I thought it might be squishy to go poking for it. So I thought the only sensible thing to do was to reply politely, as I had been taught always to do. (My parents may have sold their own daughter into a life of servitude but they were lovely really; quite irreproachable people – when not on the mainland, which, after all, is known to temporarily turn even the most stoic of island heads – in possession of impeccable manners, and there were always paper doilies at teatime. I’ve never held my sale against them.)

“Oh, I do beg your pardon!”, I said.

“Don’t worry, ” said the inestimable Ted (may choirs of unicorns neigh him to his rest!) “I expect it was the iciness gripping your soul and squeezing. Best run along now, dearie. Roland’s in a rum mood, tonight and I’m already terribly nervous from that big-rig back at the M25.”

Roland whipped and yeehaed Ted round a corner and I was alone in the street. I could have run then. Don’t think I haven’t replayed that moment over and over in my mind. But I still had hope at that point, contrary to my every instinct, that I might find some small measure of kindness in my new life with the Billingsgates.

“Well gerra move on, you dozy bint!” cried Mrs. Billingsgate from the gate. “There’s supper to fetch for 22 ‘ungry men and you ain’t no use to man nor beast gawping out there.”

I went in.

I’m sorry. I’m going to have to finish this another time. I can’t go on right now. Too awfully moving and difficult, you know, revisiting these dark chapters.

Leaping from tall building to tall building to short one and then “Ouchee!” a church spire, Our Heroine looks down and locates the right window. With a double-back flip-floppy bound, triple toe-axle and shimmy, she flies through the glass, landing with ease beside a stove on which a pot is gently simmering. She plies in ballet position 4.

“Where is it?” she asks, easily the most well-groomed and self-possessed in the small kitchen, despite her unconventional journey.

A young, harrassed-looking woman points mutely at a bowl of batter. On her hip is a child, maybe 3 or 4, eyes wide with amazement at the turn the evening has taken.

In a single, fluid, panther-like motion Our Heroine is at the bowl. Lifting one arm, she examines the lining of her long, dark and extremely well-tailored cloak and appears to mull something over briefly. “Hmm. A titanium-tipped Smith&Oliver 3000, I think. This sucker’s already starting to form lumps.”

With a flash of silver, she pulls out the eggwhisk and turns to her task.

“Close all the doors and windows, and hold on to the child!” she orders, her bluey-greeny-greyee-browny eyes, flashing and alive with a burning, other-worldy intensity.

The lights dim of their own accord, as if aware that their brilliance is not required right now; knowing, some-mysterious-how, that all the energy in the room will soon be concentrated in the batter-bowl.

Our Heroine begins. A low hum fills the room and she lowers the eggwhisk into the batter, wincing as she does so: this part can sometimes get messy real quick and she’s only used the Smith&Oliver once before. At the ambassador’s party, wasn’t it? The macaroons. But there’s no time for such idle thoughts – the lumps are bobbing on the surface now. Blee!

With a mighty plunge she thrusts the eggwhisk into the bowl and the lights dim even further. The hum is getting so loud now that the child and her mother cover their ears. The lights wink out. The hum rises. It’s almost screaming, and a golden light is emanating from the bowl as sparks of green and gold fly onto the laminated counter-top. Tomorrow, only a few singe marks on the linoleum will convince little Lucy that it wasn’t all a dream. Right now, The Mysterious Lady’s arm is just a blur, moving impossibly fast, her face a grim mask of concentration.

The curtains on the window are starting to flap as the whisking continues; the young woman’s patched, worn skirt starts to tug her in towards the bowl. Soon pieces of paper and napkins are whirling in a tornado above the counter. The child, Lucy, reaches up to catch a passing pepper-pot and her mother feels her grip begin to loosen on her daughter. A curtain tears loose and books are flying off the shelves, drawn inexorably, irresistably towards the batter-bowl…

The child screams.

And then there is calm. No sound, save that of old recipe cards twirling softly, eerily to the floor. The lights flicker back on.

Comes a voice, matter-of-fact, yet warm and tinkly: “That’s me, then! Just pop in the frying pan now, with plenty of good butter and a twist of pepper and, Bob’s your uncle, the lightest, fluffiest ommelettes your guests will ever eat this side of the pearly gates. What’s the occasion? Husband having his boss over for dinner?”

“N-n-n-no” stammers the young woman “His mother…awful woman…will be looking for dust and a four-course meal, but we can only afford eggs while Jimmy Jr’s out of work, you see. But, see…she doesn’t know he’s out of work and…it all seemed so hopeless half an hour ago…I can’t even boil an egg, far less make a moist, fluffy and delicious ommelette with one and …Oh!… How can I ever thank you?”

Our Heroine turns and regards the young woman kindly. She looks tired, she thinks.

“Just bring me a fresh towel please and I’ll be on my way. I think I’ve got some batter on my cloak.”

Not half a minute later, the young woman returns to the kitchen with the towel and gasps at the sight before her. For in that time, The Mysterious Lady has somehow, incredibly, set a full, sparkling table with a standing rib-roast steaming softly in the centre, surrounded by tasteful flowers and delectable-looking side-dishes.

“Oh my!”

The doorbell rings and she turns her head, in confusion towards it. When she looks back, The Mysterious Lady, Our Heroine, is gone. The young woman rushes to the window – there is nothing, noone. But, looking up into the darkening sky, she fancies for a moment she sees an extra twinkly star and could it be?… a shower of green sparks…? The doorbell rings again and she moves to answer it.

Moments later, in a dining-room in Ojai, a problemchildbride enters, looking breath-taking in a silk, inky-blue dress.

“Darling! There you are!” says her ProblemHusband. “Our guests are ready for some of your famous Baked Alaska.”

“Why, of course” says the problemchildbride and, spinning smartly on one heel, she glides towards the kitchen. As she leaves the room, noone notices her smoothing a tiny lock of stray hair from her otherwise immaculate bouffant, back into place, eyes twinkling merrily.

“”I think I’ve got some batter on my cloak.”" she says, almost scornfully, to herself. “I NEVER allow foodstuffs to get on my cloak. Still, I couldn’t let that young woman see how it’s done. But…wait… where was the child? Did she see? Oh buggrit! I really don’t want to have to kidnap another one…”

Finis.

http://anewwordforfast.blogspot.com/

(I appear to have underlined everything. Hmm. How to un-underline everything? It happened when I was adding the Latigo link above. Can any lovely tecchie person help?)

Update: Ha! Am genius! Fixed it myself.

Following a conversation with Mr. Latigo “Probably The Gloomiest Cowboy In The World” Flint, I came away feeling edified as usual because he is indeed awfully good at writing words down in ways I wish I’d thought of. But also – and I may be imagining this – I was left feeling well, slighted somehow; patted on the head and told to run along, sort of. You see, I think my friend Mr Latigo “Probably The Gloomiest Cowboy In The World” Flint doubts my ability to be an effective second in a bar-brawl! The cheek of that!

Just because I can make a souffle that’s lighter than air, a full roast with all the trimmings and melt-in-the-mouth billberry pie for guests who have telephoned just 30 minutes ago to say they’re popping over, and still appear looking polished and immaculate in every way … just because I have a “skill-set difference” with Latigo “A New Word For Fast” Flint does not mean I would not be superlative in any low-down hole-in-the-wall ruckus. I am a professional housewife who takes pride in all I do! (Although, admittedly, I don’t get paid.)

Needless to say, I took umbrage because it’s cheaper than taking more medication. I had a silent fuming think and this is what I thought: I thought I would outline the 3 certainly-very-useful assets I could bring to the brawl.

Fortunately, I am splendid in any bar-brawl situation. I have attended many, mostly recreationally but sometimes in an incitatory capacity and learnt a fair few things along the way. I feel I could ably assist in the following ways:

Firstly, it is not a difficult task to wound the pride of a man, although his relative woundability depends a good deal on his age and what he is drinking at the time – there’s actually a scientific equation on that, I think. Gin drinkers, for example, are notoriously even-tempered and not where a hopeful brawler should start. Whisky drinkers, on the other hand, are itching for confrontation; the older ones might not be as ready to jump to their feet but can be useful in further agitating the younger men to war (much like in the Middle East or indeed anywhere) It takes only a passing comment about a man’s hairiness relative to the other cowboys to put the explosive spark to the tinder-box that is the average desperado bar (I assume Latigo only goes to very good desperado bars). The jury is still out on whether hairiness is a good or bad thing in the low-life whisky-swilling world. Hairy could = manliness with hairlessness =ing womanliness. Or, so the other school of thought goes: hair is a disadvantage because it allows your opponent more purchase while grabbing you in a fight. Less hairy men are therefore more evolutionarily advanced and hairy ones are mere yahoos.

So, this I do. You’ve forgotten haven’t you? I almost did myself. So this I do: I pass a comment about hairiness; nobody present knows what they think about hairiness but they won’t let that stop them; the older men urge on the younger men and the tinderbox explodes.

The second thing I am very good at is standing about with a raised bar-stool and bashing any comical cowboys who might buffoon their way hilariously into my sphere of whacking. Indeed, I have found no other use to which this skill can be put, than bar-brawling.

Thirdly, if the Goddess of Bar-Brawls (Jennifer) looks like She does not that day favour us, I can be most useful in bringing things to a dignified close through the sheer force of my housewiffery:

Standing on the bar, I will bang my duck-headed umbrella on the taps and call for quiet. This will not be heard above the roar of of the fray, the scraping of the tables and the sickening crunch of bone against splintered bone. I will then repeat the call, more loudly. This will also go unnoticed and, just when I look like the most arrant idiot (heeheehee – what a mistake those men will make underestimating ME!) I will raise myself up to my full height, swiftly don a formidable bonnet and, in the manner of Mary Poppins, roar “WHEN you have QUITE finished!”

Brawlers everywhere will freeze in comical mid-punch attitude and turn to stare.

“Thank you” I will say crisply. Then, untroubled by the gaze of 100 (ish, maybe only 99 if it’s a very desperate desperado joint) bloodthirsty, yet astonished eyes, I will rap the nearest man on the forhead with my duck umbrella and demand that he help a lady down from the bar. Several ham-heads will rush forward to do this, unaccustomed as they will be, to see a lady in their midst, especially one in a wasp-waisted crinolene dress and apron (I’d wear my pinny for protection against the spraying brawler blood, you see. Preparation and foresight are a housewife’s best friends. And also Philippe)

I will stroll amongst the assembled brawlers asking random pugilists what their mothers would think of them if they could see them now. They will blush in shame. I will gesture sweepingly about at the disarray and posit “Who do you think will have to clear this mess up? Yes, you man! (fixing one pulpy-headed galoot with a hard stare, poking him in the chest and then wiping my finger in distaste with a lily-white handkerchief) Do you have something to say? A suggestion of any sort? No? I thought not.”

Then, wheeling round on one heel I will charge: “Somebody’s mother or granny or sister, that’s who! Some poor underpaid cleaning-lady who will be coming in at 2am, hoping against hope that the mess will be minimal tonight so she can get back home to look after her old Mama and Papa, the seven crippled children and in time to medicate the bipolar goldfish, (and we all know what happens when a goldfish doesn’t get his jujubes). And I expect her husband’s long gone – in fact, I bet he’s one of you!”

Somebody will no doubt mutter (for they always do) “Yeah Merv, that’s a sorry stunt to pull on your old lady, runnin’ out on her, what with all her troubles.”

Merv will say (he will be called Merv, they always are) “My Sarah’s an angel, she is, with all she has to contend wid’. She deserves better than me – ’swhy I hadda go! I felt like crap in the presence of such noble, yet never quite concealed, sacrifice. Day after day of bearing someone else’s noble sacrifice (shakes head) I tell you I couldn’t live with such an angel no more, guys, I just couldn’t.” Then he will spit out a tooth.

A muttering will arise around the room: “Sarah…blooming angel…too good for any of us…Shucks I feel bad now…shee-it, man…nothing like a bit o’ guilt to ruin a good brawl…I hardly feel like it any more”.

One by one, battered and bloody men will sit down and look glum and feel shame at the thought of weary Sarah coming in to clean up their mess.

“Come on then, spick spock”, I will interject, because that’s what Mary Poppins would say and not be being racist. “Chop chop, best foot forward! You find a dustpan and brush, and you – my word, that IS a lot of blood! I expect you’ll live. You man, pick up those tables! Get to work all of you, I want to see my face in the floor when you’ve finished tidying this almighty mess up.”

Chagrined, the former testosterone-charged burly ill-breds will fall to their tasks of polishing and sweeping and some of them will secretly like it. The amazed barman will remunerate us for my assistance in the cessation of the brawl, and you and I, Latigo, will proceed to the next bar and repeat. All who see us go will wonder and ask who we were. And we will run away giggling.

Later, after all the patrons have left, Benny, and not Sarah (who doesn’t exist) will come in to do his stint as a cleaner and will be delighted that all is tidy and agleam with the elbow grease of 50 cowboys. He will find that one rough cowboy (his name will be Bud, for it always is) has even folded the toilet-paper into a pointy bit in the bathroom, and left some pot-pourri by the urinal.

Benny does not deserve to be delighted though because he is, in reality, a pimp and “late-night-cleaner-man” is just his cover job; a reason to give the cops for being out all night. The delight of the abominable Benny is the only flaw in my otherwise beautifully planned night of bar-brawling and fun, but I am not inflexible and am open to suggestions there.

I think I shall wear my white evening gloves.

*

(But all my other posts seem to have underlined themselves too. O lovely tecchie person! Where are you??)

I am having an affair!

Just the other day I looked at my watch and saw (what’s this!) I have become a 32 year-old problemchildbride and what’s more a California housewife too. Time to get your skates on, Sam, I sighed to myself. Time to have the affair.

Most of the other housewives in the local League of Housewives have had 3 or 4 affairs by now and are starting to think me either gay or odd. Gayness would be fine with them – and actually rather a feather in their collective this-season cap for being such very tolerant zeitygeistyish housewives – so it’s sort of unfortunate I’m not gay as Oddness is social death at the Annual Housewife Stain-Removal Championships (Ojai Chapter). No clearer example of that was needed after Jenny “Odd Duck” Capon took a turn, actually jumped into a large cake and declared her wish to be taken to Vegas to become a stripper. Her daughter’s reasoned pleading that she was 73 and arthritic could not change her mind and in the end the fire-brigade had to be called to get her out of the cake. She’s never been back to meetings despite her meat-loaf being legendary in the Tri-County region. It’s very sad.

Anyway, I got the message loud and clear. It was time to either have an affair or be forced to hand in my advanced-level protective rubber gloves (“Marigolds” of course – a peerless glove) and my hard-earned Golden Pinnie to the District League. I love my Golden Pinnie dearly and I was damned if I was going to let that besom Porphyria Smith waltz off with it unearned; I know for a fact her sparkling faucets have grimy bits behind them and she doesn’t clean out her toaster crumb-tray daily as a Golden Pinnie wearer oughter. Fur-coat and no knickers type, as my granny would say. We all know them.

The ProblemHusband and I have been happy together these last 11 years and so it was only with some weariness that I changed into my sauciest leopard-skin apron, absently opened the top two buttons on my fur-trimmed nylon housecoat and gloomily sashayed out of the door to embark on my affair. Truly the burdens on a So Cal housewife are many and complex, I reflected, as I made my way towards the pool.

How wrong was I to be downcast!

The affairee is the pool-boy and his name is Juan. And not the “Wan” kind of Juan either, but the hawking, throaty, “Ccchwan” kind of Juan which is much sexier, all the housewives agree.

It was simply meant to be with Juan and I, for he is all I look for in a man. He is somewhere between Alan Rickman, Al Pacino, Jon Stewart, Andre Sakharov and Leonard Cohen. Really! He is like the long-lost second cousin that links them all. And he is 49, which is quite unusual for a pool boy, but very lucky for me, as my tastes run more ripe than green in both my seasonal fruit dishes and my men. (I also like the time to be ripe. For laundry, love, origami, anything really, just as long as it’s good and ripe. I once tried the Chinese paper arts when the time wasn’t ripe but that’s another post).

Anyway Juan is the pool-boy of my dreams and we’ve been very happy together since Monday when the affair began. We talk of politics, art and wine late into the warm, starlit nights and laugh tinklingly, as lovers do.

But sometimes we grow serious. Juan has seen many troubles in his life. He has known the shadows. He has felt the ignominy of the cursed. He has been rejected for his beliefs (Methodist), time and time again but has had a lot of walk-on parts in ads. I try to soothe his cares. I stroke his brow and whisper softly to him that Method-acting worked wonders for Brando and De Niro and tell him that these producers are just fools; souless pen-pushers for whom a solid bottom line is more affecting than a quivering bottom lip, no matter how exquisitely acted that lip might be, and even if that particular shaving-foam advert required both stiff upper and lower lips. The poor lamb’s chin is still quite hacked up with nicks from that shoot.

The Problem Husband doesn’t mind my little fling in the least as he and Juan share a passion for avocado-farming and have similar views on Mrs. Thatcher and sauerkraut. Sometimes I feel a bit left out to be honest.

Tonight, as Juan left, we stared deep into each others’ eyes and swore that next week we would start holding hands.

Colin writhed and turned. He was asleep but thrashed against Genevieve, slumbering gently beside him. Remarkably, she didn’t wake but continued her own delicious dream in which her normally dimpled, doughy-white thighs were now a golden brown and some loving, unseen hand was caressing her with honey-butter lotions and oils.

A mere two hours before, Colin, Genevieve and the other soldiers had been lined up neatly and patiently, awaiting their instructions. They’d been kept quite literally in the dark about their mission, but they had all been raised together and knew that they could count on each other. They’d been told from as far back as they could remember that they had been born for this mission and each was determined to do his or her duty to the nth degree. Little did any of them suspect how high that nth degree would be.

There were some understandable jitters then, amongst this small platoon of waiting soldiers. They were pale and exhausted from the journey. They’d travelled in cramped, poor conditions. The smell of the diesel engine sickened them and many were jammed up uncomfortably against an enormous box, the only discernable letters of which were “KEL”. Colin dreamed on…

He was falling and falling until, with a soft plop, he landed on a vast brown plain. The grass around him was sere and coarse but it had cushioned his fall well enough. He felt a movement under his feet and froze.

A deep, disembodied voice boomed “Crumbs! It fell on Chops, The Dawg!”.

This time the lurch was unmistakable and it’s force threw Colin back into a soft copse. A quick check over his body, as he’d been taught, told Colin he had sustained no injuries but he didn’t know who had spoken or who “The Dawg” was and he wasn’t in a hurry to find out.

But what now? Things were changing again, in the way dreams do. In an instant he found himself slung high into the air and slammed down hard, onto on a cold white surface with a glaring fluorescent light overhead shining in his eyes and dazzling him.

“‘Ave you prepared it yet?”, came a voice, this time female and nerve-gratingly nasal.

“Close” said the booming voice. “It won’t be long now. The master will be satisfied this time, I’m sure”.

“Good, that last lot we sent up was a bit pasty-coloured. Didn’t like the look of ‘em, meself. There’s no wonder it displeased ‘im. Look, I’ll give you a hand, there’s only one left”.

Again Colin felt himself swing high, higher and then with a sickening crunch he was slammed face-down on some sort of a metal rack. The rack felt like it was on fire. Colin tried to recoil from the blistering bars but, almost immediately, he felt the scorch on his back; a searing heat from somewhere above was beating down on him and he began to smell the unmistakeable odor of burning flesh. His own.

“Genevieve!”, he yelled, as the pain screamed through his back and shoulders.

“Colin! Colin!” he thought he heard her cry.

Then louder, more urgently, “COLIN! COLIN! AAAAAAGH!”

He awoke, sweating and shaken as he looked around. Genevieve had gone, but the others were lying a short way away, apparantly still fast asleep. He shook his shoulders and smiled at his foolishness. For a moment there he could have sworn he was a … no it was just too ridiculous. Where do these dreams come from? he wondered.

Colin didn’t notice the gigantic, hairy hand as it came from behind him, and he was still smiling at his ludicrous dream when he heard The Master say, “Now that’s what I call a proper toast soldier! Pass the paper, darling, there’s a dear.”

Nobody heard Colin scream. Back on the plate, the others were just beginning to awaken and stir. The last thought he had in this life, as he was thrust into the dark, putrid mouth of The Master was, “Genevieve. Of course: French toast.”

******

For non-British people – toast soldiers are a nursery-food breakfast staple in houses with either small children, old people or students in them. A piece of buttered toast is cut into 4 strips or “soldiers” and then they are often dipped into a soft-boiled egg. We British use them as devices with which to paste up our wallpaper. Of course we don’t. We eat them. The British Empire was won on such breakfasts of champions. And then lost again, when we began the practise of smearing axle-grease or “Marmite” on our morning toast.

There is a lesson in this for Americans: stick to cornflakes. The day you start getting comfortable and lazy with your so-called “Pop-Tarts” and your Krispy Kreme WhatHaveYous is the day when your empire will also begin to crumble.

Be great again, America! Rediscover your core breakfast beliefs set down by the great breakfast giants, Kellogg, Quaker and the peerless Post! Don’t go the sugary, mass-produced junk-food route – that way lies only Metabolic Syndrome, diabetes and an inability to compete globally because you’re hungry again by mid-morning.

Eat an egg and soldiers in the morning, floss well, and you’ll be ready for anything the Chinese can throw at you!

(PAID FOR BY THE EGG AND BREAD MARKETING BOARD OF AMERICA.)